My parents had been with her only a few days and planned to stay for months. It was winter over there so it wasn’t as though she could send them off to the beach all day. She worked from home so she’d struggle to get anything done while they were there. That was the problem with her living so far away; most of the time she was free of them, but every now and then they’d visit for weeks and came back only when she hit her breaking point.

I was just about to reply when an e-mail popped up. It was from Tom, sending a link to the estate agent’s site:

Good morning, Ruby. Hope you’re OK. Just to let you know that our house is officially on sale now x

Bleary-eyed, I sat up in bed and pulled my laptop toward me so that I could see the photos of my house. I’d asked for them to be sent to me for approval, but obviously they’d taken no notice of me.

My heart ached as I scrolled through the listing. I hadn’t been inside our house for weeks and I missed it so much. It was tidy and clean, though I’d put good money on the local Molly Maid being responsible for that. I stared at the picture of my living room. Tom had removed the photos from the mantelpiece and replaced them with a glass bowl from the hall. I zoomed out so that I could see the whole room. He’d moved the sofas, so that they were adjacent to each other instead of facing. I zoomed in on them. The sofas reminded me of the day we bought them. I’d thought I was pregnant that day and hadn’t wanted to tell Tom just yet. Every month at that point I’d get so excited and then I’d have that crushing sense of disappointment when my period arrived. At the time we’d bought the sofas, I was obsessed with becoming pregnant and would take test after test each month. It became a joke that really wasn’t funny, with Tom coming home saying, “On my way home from London I just happened to walk past a pharmacy and they had these tests you’ve never tried! I bought you some for good luck.”